Hi All,

I have some general questions related to FPGA.
What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years
down the line?
What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what
will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future?
Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera,
camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number
of FPGAs/consumer changing?

Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major
bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will
the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up??

There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or
processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to
market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two
factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs
completely in the future?

If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major
bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth?

I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!)
and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs.

Thanks.